As measures to deal with COVID-19 across the world continue to restrict in-person gatherings, many are grappling with what Christian faith looks like right now. This article will consider 2 ways that Christians of the past have dealt with plagues, diseases and epidemics. First things first. We need to recognize that throughout human history, widespread …
From Lydia Maingi’s editorial: What comes to mind for most people when they hear the words ‘youth ministry’ is lights, top quality sound system, activities and food… With so many things battling for the attention of young minds today many youth leaders have responded by offering alternative ‘clean’ entertainment. But the problem with the entertainment solution …
The Bible starts with a garden but ends with a garden city. The biggest Gentile mission of the Old Testament was to a city – Nineveh. In the most recent issue of Conversation Magazine, Gerald Mwangi looks at the issue of urban mission. Perhaps the strongest contemporary proponent of God’s focus on cities is Tim Keller and his …
Our 6th issue of Conversation (Volume 2 Issue 1) engages the recent debate in Kenya regarding the Religious Societies regulation. The issue that was claimed to have made the increased regulation necessary – “rogue preachers” – is a tricky one as it often connects with a whole theological-cultural-aspirational system. As a wise older pastor commented, even …
Marshall Segal (ed) Killjoys: The Seven Deadly Sins, Desiring God, 2015 Reviewed by Njeri Maina: The book ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’ has been authored by a number of theologians from the Christian organization DesiringGod.org: Johnathon Bowers, Ryan Griffith, David Mathis, Jason Meyer, Jonathan Panel, John Piper, Tony Reinke, Joe Rigney and Marshall Segal. They are …
Jim Reeves wrote a song back in the years titled, “This world is not my home I’m just passing through.” In one of the verses, he puts it this way, My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue, The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door. And I can’t feel at home in this … Continue reading
By Dancan Muthomi Several months into the Coronavirus crisis, a great deal has been written. The crisis has shaken individuals and countries, especially with the reports of death and economic destruction. For the first time in many years, every social stratum has been affected. Whether rich or poor, young or old, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, … Continue reading
![Elijah Men Eat Meat [review]](https://conversationmagazine.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/elijah-men.jpg?w=290&h=290&crop=1 "Elijah Men Eat Meat [review]")
Joshua D Jones, pastor of Therfield Chapel, Cambridge, UK, blogger at Sanity’s Cove, vlogger at Counterfeit Vlog, has written a great devotional for our times. The title is a bit strange but the content is spot on – punchy, Reformation-style preaching in 80 short chapters like a volley of flaming arrows. Elijah The focus of … Continue reading
Steve Fuller (Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, University of Warwick, UK) in his foreword to a new book, describes the way in which the Reformation in Europe 500 years ago opened the way for and may even be said to have birthed modern science. But he goes further to describe how, just as the church … Continue reading
Book Now Ekklesia Afrika: In our efforts at EBC Nairobi to encourage and equip pastors we have started a ministry that we are calling Ekklesia Afrika. Ekklesia Afrika is a ministry that seeks to meet a primary need among African pastors by providing them access to much needed theological resources in form of books, electronic … Continue reading
We’ve looked at a couple of themes in this post-post-modern condition – the new truth and the new morality. The third theme – the new state – flows from and enforces the previous two themes. In a nutshell, the new state tends towards populist totalitarianism. An important caveat Before going on though it is important … Continue reading
The agenda of the New Atheists was never simply to promote science and materialism over and against religious belief and super-naturalism (though that was core); it was also the promotion of a new morality: an attempt to show that religion was not only untrue but bad and that atheistic humanism can produce a superior morality … Continue reading
Post-modernity was open to any narrative, any ‘truth.’ If you wanted to say there were fairies at the bottom of your garden then that was ‘an interesting folk perspective worthy of narration’ (and worthy of a PhD or two exploring the polyvalence and intertextuality of this tradition). In fact post-modernism was suspicious of science because … Continue reading
The death of post-modernism has been announced by a number of cultural commentators. In 2006 Alan Kirby wrote an article in Philosophy Now called, ‘The death of postmodernism and beyond.’ Another British writer, Edward Docx, in a 2011 article for Prospect Magazine, ‘Postmodernism is dead,’ noticed that a London museum was putting on a ‘retrospective’ … Continue reading
Really helpful piece from Peter Muturi on the danger of ‘purpose’ language turning inward. What is your purpose? I have been trying to figure out where the idea of “living your purpose” began in Christian circles. At face value it sounds good and is true because we are greatly loved and cherished (not because we … Continue reading
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